How long are your games going?

[animus]

How many turns are these games going. Seems like good games go 3-4 hours and slaughters are over by 2, but I was also wondering how many turns we're getting in.

 

[Court Jester]

I saw a recon game the other day that lasted just 3 turns before all the Dilgar were wiped off the table and only a single ISA ship was taken out in reply. However the ISa still only won by a few VP's. That game lasted a few hours and was a 5 point battle fleet (ISA) vs a 3 point battle fleet (Dilgar).

 

[Spideredd]

If you want to see a good game, try this one.
This is a 1 patrol game, and fighters are disallowed (more for balance than anything.)
the table is very dense with asteroids and stella gas
one ship is placed 12" away from the short table edge and the other side is placed on the edge.
The aim of the game is simple pursuit, the player at the table edge being the pursuer.
The game ends when either ship is detroyed for whatever reason, or the pursued escapes of the opposite edge.
I've seen a game like this take hours, simply because both players had to carfully plan their moves. The winner was declared when someone made a mistake and went into an asteroid.

 

[David Anla Shok']

How many points are you folks playing? Fleet size and composition will have a big effect on game length.
Regards,

 

[animus]

From what I've been hearing, 2e games are pretty decisive: three or four turns and it's all over but the bleeding. This is still a couple of hours, but in game terms, it seems over pretty quick.

On the one hand, I think it's probably "realistic" if I can call it that. Modern warfare seems to work that way "Shock and Awe" or what have you. On the other hand, I don't know if it makes for a good game when you can't snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.

Hurm.....

 

[Taran]

My question is How much time do you want the game to be played in. I personally like playing a 3-4 hour game that involves lots of maneuver. I am concerned that the current direction of the game is pushing it to a 1-2 hour game timeframe.


Dave

That would be the current direction of gamING. Everyone wants a lot of quick games.
I don't know what system started it, but all of the longest lived games (WH, CBT, DnD, etc.) make it possible to have said shorter games (mostly for tourneys or introductory games for newbs) but also to have the really huge games that may take months to play out...

 

[Voronesh]

I mostly play 5 point battle games. Just because i like big ships so much.

They normally take 3 hours to play out, and after the 2nd turn its mostly decided if it turned out to be a slaughterfest. 4th turn if its relatively evenmatched.

Some matchups like EA vs. Narn simply turn into slugfests by design of both races ships. But throw in ISA and all of the sudden, the move increase "slows" the game down turnwise.

 

[pasuuli]

Of course, I loves the big ships and large groups. But, these days, it seems like I may have two-hour blocks of free time, but I seldom have four-hour blocks.

 

[Taran]

If you have a place you can leave a game that is inprocess and reasonably expect it to remain undisturbed until you can finish, you break those long games up into 2 hour blocks...

 

[Greg Smith]

Games are shorter timewise if you reduce the number of ships. Cap the number of ships to 6-8 and it will keep the timefrime down to around 2 hours.

 

[animus]

How many turns though? My point is that I'm thinking there's no "come back from behind" in this game, or much of a defense at all.

 

[Ripple]

We've had a number of games that came back from bad moments. But I think that has been more the exception than the rule. Turn wise we generally see a strong swing in one sides favor by the third turn, with it all over by somewhere between 5 and 8.

Ripple

 

[Iain McGhee]

Depends a lot on the fleets involved and the terrain setup, but usually around six turns.

 

[KJ]

None of my 2e games have gone past turn 4 before it became obvious who would win, and most of those were becoming pretty lopsided by the end of turn 3.

All of the games have been "classic" match-ups (Early EA vs. Minbari, Centauri vs. Narn); Minbari have an edge over the apes 4-2, while the Fanheads have been dominating the Spotheads 5-0.

I give most of the credit for the Centauri wins to the Sulust and Demos. The Sulust feels about right for a Raid ship, but the Demos is over-the-top for Skirmish. Give it two more twin arrays, 10 more structure and bump it to Raid, or drop 2 twin arrays and 2 torps, and keep it at Skirmish*.




*or make a proper point system for the game already!

 

[Iain McGhee]

Main reason mine last a little longer is probably because I almost always play campaigns and tend to use CBD and DF SAs a lot (and terrain) to try to keep my fleet relatively intact, otherwise It'd likely only be about 3 or 4 turns.

 

[Tank]

Well most of the 2e games we've played have been decided by the 3rd or 4th turn and to be fair I feel that once your behind it is ever so hard to get back into the game.

 

[Spideredd]

To be truly honest, I doubt that I could play a game of 2e for 12 turns, as suggested by one or two scenarios. Especially Vs ISA (one side or the other is dead within 3-5 turns)